Financial Times 16,780 by Mudd

7 comments on “Financial Times 16,780 by Mudd”

1. Thanks, Pete, for this wonderful blog. I really got stuck on this one, partly because of a few early mistakes. Thanks to Mudd for the challenge.

   I agree with your guess about US scientific study indicating “math” instead of the British “maths”.

   I do have an alternate parsing of 22a: LATI(n) + BRO (slang for brother) all backwards. In the US, at least, Latin can refer to an inhabitant of any Latin American country, including Mexico, although Latino, Latina, and Latinx are in more common usage these days.

2. A firm thank you to Mudd for an attainable and enjoyable crossword. I am in agreement with your math v maths supposition too Pete. Thanks for all the unravelling too.
   For some reason I had always thought that RHINO was an actual monetary unit somewhere in Africa but now find that I have been mistaken for a number of years. Oops.
   My LOI I was 10d, as I just do not have a list of English football clubs in my mind apart from the obvious ones. I had to drag it from somewhere in the back of my memory as I’m sure it has come up earlier in another crossword somewhere.

3. Thanks for the blog , my friend always gives me her FT crossword when it is Mudd or IO as she does not like them, lucky for me I think. Shedload has become more common in recent years, it may even be a politer version of your hinted suggestion for 16D which was spoiled by the D .

4. Thanks, Pete. I realised that you were not included in a transatlantic discussion of 16d at the time, concerning the IT/ED dilemma. Our mutual friend Bob had intially gone for the scatalogical alternative, thinking that, while Mudd would have been pushing the boundaries, it was not inconvceivable that he would have gone that far: then found the ED version and surmised that IT was a rather more graphic alternative to the inoffensive British SHEDLOAD. But it turns out that it’s the other way round, according to the OED which gives the earliest one as:

   1954 B. Frechtman & J. T. Nile tr. L.-F. Céline Guignol’s Band 50 ‘Ah! how I wish I were free!.. if I hadn’t my job!.. Ah! if I were free!’ And then a s—load [1969 shit-load] of sighs [Fr. une chiée de soupirs là-dessus].

   Shedload dates from 1992, as far as the OED knows, and it suggests that it is a “euphemistic alteration” of the earlier term.

   I find it all a bit strange, because “shedload” makes sense, whereas the alternative doesn’t. Although now I have consulted my Collins Robert for “chier”, I can see how it might go with “load”, although surely it’s still not a large amount.

5. Thanks Mudd and Pete
   Was late starting this one and seemed to only get short bites at it to get it finished across the Wednesday last week. Ended up as a DNF with an error with 1d where I had written in SHOCKING and was unsuccessfully trying to parse it and suspecting that it was wrong, but coming here too soon to get it fixed. Hadn’t heard of the STONKING term and STONING just didn’t come to me as a ‘biblical killing’.
   Agree that WAGNERIAN was amongst the best of the day and thought that the succinct 27a and 28a were good as well.
   Finished with the trickily clued ORBITAL, then back up to the NW corner with SEPTET and that recalcitrant STONKING as the last one in.

6. I’m with EdK on seeing lati/bro as a more satisfying way of parsing 22a. I have a great fondness for the word ‘stonking’ although now the word seems to have been sidelined into a commonplace measure of headache intensity. 20d had me distracted by ‘Gallop’ as a possibility. But hugely enjoyable, as always.

7. After some consideration and dictionary consultations I fully acknowledge that there is an alternative parsing for 22ac and one that works well. Thank you EdK and Mrs. G. for pointing this out. I still however find my original parsing the better of the two.

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